Abstract

This chapter addresses a problem that is salient in the human factors and ergonomics communities regarding the inconsistent connections between subjective ratings of workload and actual performance. Previous work with vigilance tasks showed that a substantial part of subjective workload, and further connections to actual performance, were associated with psychosocial variables related to elasticity as defined in the cusp catastrophe models for cognitive workload and fatigue. The empirical study presented in this chapter was conducted with the data set described in earlier chapters. The influence of cognitive variables, compared to psychosocial variables, is much stronger in financial decision making contexts. It now appears that context is highly relevant for determining which psychosocial or ability variables best explain individual differences in subjective ratings of workload, all situational variables considered equal. Context, furthermore, affects the combination of psychosocial variables, abilities, and subjective ratings that result in performance dynamics.